'Paddleton' A Review

Paddleton is a dramedy about two middle-aged friends Michael(Mark Duplass) and Andy(Ray Romano). The film opens on the two playing a version of racquetball they created, the titular paddleton. The two make pizza, play board games, and watch kung fu movies in the evening after a day at their respective menial jobs. Michael is diagnosed with terminal cancer and although Andy wants him to seek treatment Michael decides to avoid further suffering. Michael asks Andy for help in his final days and to spend time together like they always have.

Duplass brings his always consistent, if not terribly varied, casual charm and naturalism to the role and serves to give a simple, graceful, sometimes wry sometimes moving portrait of a man with a terminal diagnosis. It's an idea that has been done many times and can easily become saccharine or overwrought but this take feels astoundingly fresh and inspires more while trying less. As solid as Duplass is Romano is a revelation. There's no doubt he will be overlooked come awards season because this is a straight-to-Netflix winter release but his performance deserves attention. He's vulnerable, grumpy, perhaps on-the-spectrum, funny, and totally ill-prepared to face the mortality of his best and only friend, but even so he steps up to help him out. It's an incredibly nuanced and beautiful performance with comedic moments but really its a conduit for some high level pathos and compassion. As, basically, the only two in the film Duplass and Romano have wonderful understated but contagious chemistry, the simple life these two middle-class, loner, socially limited men have   starts off as kind of thin and funny but gradually reveals itself to be surprisingly deep and compelling.

Visually the film is like the performances, mostly reserved, but there are a couple of more intense hand-held sequences and a number of patient close ups and two shots that bolster they already emotionally impactful narrative. The narrative, on the surface almost too simple, is more effective and engaging the almost any buddy-comedy or cancer-drama of the past decade because of the real life scope of the characters(they aren't rich, they aren't "successful", they don't have an endless line of supportive friends, and there is no "wacky" situation for them to navigate).

This is a slice-of-life film that actually feels like real life but with enough humor and enough hope to inspire and to affirm in the most positive way why its worthwhile, even important, to be human.

Don't Miss It.